The emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web (“the web”) has significantly changed the way people communicate, locate information, purchase goods and services, and even entertain themselves. As a result, this transition into a digital economy has significantly impacted the traditional “brick and mortar” economy: bookstores, music stores, and even department stores have seen declines in business due to increased competition with online merchants. In addition to creating websites to sell physical goods, companies also use the Internet to sell intangible products such as digital news stories and books, stock price information, streaming media, and even virtual currencies to be used in online games.
The utility of and reliance upon the Internet has only grown with the recent development and popularity of smartphones and tablet computers. These mobile/portable devices allow users to access the Internet from wherever they are located, such as on a bus or at a sporting event, instead of only accessing the Internet from a PC at a desk. People with mobile devices are now able to chat with friends, send email, book restaurant reservations, and find nearby parking spaces wherever and whenever they desire.
With more and more people using the Internet from more and more places, the world of online advertising has also become more important. However, the general approach to online advertising has remained stagnant. “Banner advertisements” are often placed on webpages to attempt to lure users to purchase related goods and services, and unsolicited email messages (“SPAM” messages) are sent through email. However, both of these approaches are typically impersonal; no matter whom you are, where you are, or what you are looking for, you may be shown the same advertisement as any other person. When advertisements are not relevant to the user or the user's browsing objective, an opportunity is wasted to potentially match a willing customer with a willing vendor.
Additionally, many small organizations wish to advertise on the Internet but do not have a large budget. For these groups, then, it is extremely important to target online advertising to only potential customers in order to maximize each advertising dollar spent; displaying an advertisement to a user in Wisconsin for a small café in California is useless because that user has no or little interest in such an advertisement.
Further, much online advertising is tied to search engines. When a user enters a particular set of keywords into a search engine, the engine may attempt to match the entered keywords with one or more relevant advertisements. While this has proven somewhat successful, the advertising is inherently tied to the search engine; once a user navigates away from the search engine's result pages, the search engine can no longer provide advertising services.
Thus, there exists a need to provide new and improved systems and methods to facilitate the dynamic display of personalized and local advertising and marketing content. Further, these systems and methods must allow effective and efficient deployment of advertising without requiring fundamental changes to the Internet, World Wide Web, or Internet-enabled devices. Additionally, these systems and methods should not be rigidly tied to a particular website.